I would normally go to bed before Tyke who slept on a blanket near the back door. Usually, a parent would let Tyke outside when they woke up. Some time later, I would wake up, have breakfast, and then go outside to play with Tyke. One morning I woke up and could not find Tyke. He did not answer my calls, my mother didn’t know where he was, and close to tears, I went into the woodlot to look for my friend.
At the far eastern boundary of our property, the next-door neighbor had cut a road that marked the property line. There were trees on our side of the line, lots of dirt, and no trees on his side of the line. I never met the fellow and had no desire to do so as he was always yelling. That day, I stumbled across Tyke close to my side of the property line; he was tied up to a tree trunk with a metal chain. Years later when I was shopping in a hardware store I recognized the chain that had once tied up my friend and remembered how happy Tyke was to see me and how he tried to jump up on me, but the chain held him close to the ground. He was scared, upset, and whimpering. The chain was looped a couple times around the tree trunk, wrapped tightly around his neck and knotted in a couple places. I knew Tyke was in some pain and I tried to untie the chain around his neck, but I couldn’t do it. All I could do was sit next to Tyke in the dirt, pet him, and say things that a four- or five-year-old toddler would say when it was the first time he had to comfort another living thing.
I don’t know how long I sat with Tyke, and I don’t know exactly what my thoughts were, but at some point, I just stood up and walked to a spot in the woodlot where I knew there were some axes embedded in a stump. Tyke wanted to come with me but I had to tell him I would be back and just left him …. alone. When I got to the axes, I wasn’t strong enough to pull any of them out of the stump but I did find a small hatchet resting against a nearby tree. I picked up the hatchet and hurried back to Tyke.
I held the hatchet in both hands and swung as hard as I could – hoping to cut through the chain. My coordination was not great and as I had never used a hatchet before, I did more damage to the tree trunk than to the chain.
I spent a lot of time hacking away at the chain. Some links got embedded in the tree trunk, other links got bent, but I just kept swinging that hatchet, absolutely sure that I would eventually chop through the metal chain. Much to my surprise, the chain did eventually snap and I was able to pull Tyke away from the tree. It took a while, but I was able to remove the chain wrapped around Tyke’s neck. I recall seeing blood and torn skin under the chain and it made me cry to see my friend’s injury. Once again, my four-or-five-year-old self said what I thought was appropriate to sooth and reassure my best friend. Once Tyke was unchained, he never left me. He stayed near me and did not run into the woods or back to the house.
